FRANK PODMORE, Studies in Psychical Research. 101 book gives all these working within the limits of traditional doctrine and terminology, and resolutely trying to make the best of them. Still I should like to give an extract or two by way of example, and will take the following brief expositions of (1) the relation between Induction and Deduction, (2) the non-plurality of Causes, which seem to me admirable for their purpose : (1) "In any question of general truth, induction and deduction are mutually dependent and imply one another. This may be seen in one of the above examples. A argues that a certain metal is copper, because every metal is copper that turns green when dipped in vinegar. So far his proof appeals to a general proposition and is deductive. But if B asks how he knows the general proposition to be true, A alleges experiments or facts ; and this is inductive evidence. Deduction then depends on In- duction. But when B asks, again, how any number of past experiments can prove a general proposition, which must be good for the future as well as for the past, A invokes the uniformity of Causation ; that is, he appeals to a principle, and that is again deductive proof " (p. 4). (2) " A fire may certainly be lit in many ways ; with a match, or a flint and steel, or by rubbing sticks together, or by a flash of lightning : have we not here a plurality of causes ? Not if we take account of the whole effect ; for then we shall find it modi- fied in each case according to the difference of the Cause. In one case there will be a burnt match, in another a warm flint, in the last a changed state of electrical tension. And similar differences would be found in cases of death under different conditions, as stabbing, hanging, cholera ; or of shipwreck from explosion, scuttling, tempest. In fact if we knew the facts minutely enough, it would be found that there is only one cause (sum of conditions) for each effect (sum of co-effects), and that the order of events is as uniform backwards as forwards " (p. 156). In conclusion, I will quote the following brief reflexion which seems to me as true as it is fresh : "It is better to be vaguely right than exactly wrong. In the criticism of manners, of fine art, or of literature, in politics, religion and moral philosophy, what we are anxious to say is often far from clear to ourselves ; and it is better to indicate our meaning approximately, or as we feel about it, than to convey a false meaning, or to lose the warmth and colour that are the life of such reflexions " (p. 272). E. E. CONSTANCE JONES. Studies in Psychical Research. By FRANK PODMORE. London : Kegan, Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co., 1897. Pp. ix., 458. " PSYCHICAL " phenomena are, as it were, the Dreyfus case of Science. Their non-existence has to be accepted as a chose jugfa,
